Gearing up for the UCI in RVA

3cc13374fc7262dcc3cfb69815daa912My hometown, Richmond, Virginia, is gearing up to host the UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) Road World Championships bike race. The event begins this Saturday, September 19 and concludes on the 27th. On Friday at 6:30, the Richmond Symphony will be playing for a crowd of 10,000-plus spectators at the opening ceremonies on Brown’s Island, near the James River in downtown Richmond.

In celebration of the UCI World Championships, here is a historical curiosity: Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two), the 1892 popular song, performed by Max Mathews, one of the pioneers of computer music. This 1962 recording, produced in the Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, was one of the earliest experiments in speech synthesis and digitally reproduced sound. The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke visited the lab around the time this music was produced and incorporated it into the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The HAL 9000 computer sings it as it is being shut down.

This work, revolutionary when it was first developed and now taken for granted, opened the door for everything from John Adams’ Hoodoo Zephyr  to the “expressive” auto-tuning of Cher’s 1998 song, Believe

…and here is the soaring “flying bicycle” music from John Williams’ film score to E.T (1982). Notice the way the theme reaches increasingly higher, giving us a visceral sense of upward lift:

If you can think of more examples of bicycle-inspired music, share them in the thread below.

About Timothy Judd

A native of Upstate New York, Timothy Judd has been a member of the Richmond Symphony violin section since 2001. He is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music where he earned the degrees Bachelor of Music and Master of Music, studying with world renowned Ukrainian-American violinist Oleh Krysa.

The son of public school music educators, Timothy Judd began violin lessons at the age of four through Eastman’s Community Education Division. He was a student of Anastasia Jempelis, one of the earliest champions of the Suzuki method in the United States.

A passionate teacher, Mr. Judd has maintained a private violin studio in the Richmond area since 2002 and has been active coaching chamber music and numerous youth orchestra sectionals.

In his free time, Timothy Judd enjoys working out with Richmond’s popular SEAL Team Physical Training program.

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